‘My energy comes from optimism’: the hopeful music of spring 2021 | Music
[ad_1] Ashley Monroe I started writing songs after my father died when I was 13. I used music to release the sadness that was flooding my heart and held on to my guitar like it was a float in an ocean. As an artist, I’ve always wanted to provoke chills, because to me that means […]
‘If not hope, then what?’: the musicians finding optimism in dark times | Music
[ad_1] Michelle Zauner, Japanese Breakfast I had really given up on music after my mom passed away [in 2014], and then of course the record that I saw as my death rattle [2017’s Soft Sounds from Another Planet] got picked up in a big way. It was a very bittersweet moment where all these great […]
And all that jazz: innovative album covers from the 1950s on – in pictures
[ad_1] In a new Taschen book Jazz Covers, a range of striking and colourful album artworks showcase a long-running relationship between the worlds of design and jazz music, from Archie Shepp to Duke Ellington Continue reading… [ad_2] This content first appear on the guardian
Gurrumul, Omar Souleyman, 9Bach and DakhaBrakha: the best global artists the Grammys forgot | Music
[ad_1] This week I wrote about the glaring lack of international inclusivity in the Grammys’ newly redubbed global music (formerly world music) category. In the category’s 38-year history, almost 80% of African nations have never had an artist nominated; no Middle Eastern or eastern European musician has ever won; every winner in the past eight […]
Adrian Younge: The American Negro review – a profound undertaking | Soul
[ad_1] The American Negro is a mammoth project from producer and multi-instrumentalist Adrian Younge: a 26-track part-spoken word, part-orchestral examination of the structural racism underpinning the identity of modern America. It forms just one part of Younge’s current projects on the same theme, including a four-part podcast, Invisible Blackness, and a short film, T.A.N. Delving […]
Archie Shepp on jazz, race and freedom: ‘Institutions continue to abuse power’ | Jazz
[ad_1] One night at Five Spot Cafe in the early 1960s, two gangsters were sitting at the bar when Cecil Taylor’s group started to play. Taylor, a pianist, poet and leading figure in the new vanguard of jazz musicians, was known for his intense sets that could – on the wrong night – clear bars […]
Joni Mitchell: how rock misogyny made me into a militant fan | Pop and rock
[ad_1] Maybe appropriately, as she is the epitome of “grown-up” music, I didn’t get into Joni until my 30s. Her early albums had been in my parents’ collection but I’d never really paid much heed – until the boho folk revival of the early 2000s had me reassessing them along with their Bert Jansch and […]
Chick Corea: his 10 greatest recordings | Chick Corea
[ad_1] The jazz pioneer Chick Corea died last week at the age of 79, leaving behind one of the most garlanded and wide-ranging catalogues in the genre’s history. He played with Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock; he could be showboating and sensitive, and traversed the distance between experimentation and accessibility. Guardian jazz critic John Fordham […]
Johnny Pacheco, co-founder of New York’s Latin label Fania, dies aged 85 | Music
[ad_1] Johnny Pacheco, the co-founder of trailblazing salsa label Fania Records, has died aged 85. The cause was complications from pneumonia. A representative for Fania said Pacheco was “the man most responsible for the genre of salsa music. He was a visionary and his music will live on eternally.” Pacheco, a flautist frustrated by the […]
Chick Corea: a fearless musical adventurer who took the art of piano to new heights | Chick Corea
[ad_1] A certain melodic sparkle and an irresistible rhythmic vitality were the elements that allowed Chick Corea to move beyond the restricted audiences of the jazz world to capture listeners from other spheres. In so doing, he inspired generations of musicians, not just with the notes he played and the ideas he explored, but with […]
